solar.py: This is a library of utility functions useful for computing the seasonal and geographical distribution of stellar flux for planets in circular or elliptical orbits. This script also includes routines which calculate the orbital position of a planet as a function of time. Mostly, it is intended to be imported into other scripts in the Chapter 7 collection. If you want to use it in other scripts, you should put a copy in one of the directories in your PYTHONPATH.plot_solar.py : Makes the basic contour plot of seasonal/latitude flux factor for circular orbits, and also line plots of the annual mean fux factor. Uses
NCEPSeasonalCycle.py: This is a specialized script that was used to make the line plots of zonal-mean seasonal cycle, and the map of the geographic distribution of the seasonal cycle. It is a specialized script that is mainly of interest to those who want to make use of netCDF format data sets for advanced data analysis. It reads a file of NCEP monthly mean gridded temperatures in netCDF format, and does the analysis to make and plot multi-year composite seasonal cycles. To read netCDF files, you must have Nio installed. Nio is distributed at the same site as Ngl and is installed using a similar procedure (see instructions here). Note: The dataset of NCEP monthly mean temperatures has not yet been put in the WorkbookDatasets collection for this chapter, but will eventually be moved there. SeasonalCycle.py : This script computes the seasonal cycle of temperature for a mixed layer model by numerical integration. It will work with an arbitrary surface cooling function and an arbitrary form of the seasonal cycle of insolation. It is currently set up to compute insolation assuming a circular orbit, but that can easily be changed. ]It also contains an option to incorporate some very idealized sea ice effects, as discussed at the end of the chapter in connection with the seasonal cycle of sea ice and transition to ice-free climates. . This script uses OLRPoly.py from the Chapter 4 scripts collection. You will need to either put a copy of OLRPoly in the directory from which you are running SeasonalCycle.py, or in a directory in your PYTHONPATH .diffusion.py : Numerically solves the diffusion equation subject to a radiation flux boundary condition at the top. Used in the discussion of thermal inertia for solid surfaces. It stores the results in Curve objects cDepth, cTime, which you can plot using plot(cDepth) and plot(cTime) after the computation is done.fluxExplorer.py : This script defines a set of functions for exploring the seasonal/latitudinal flux distribution for planets in eccentric orbits, as a function of obliquity, eccentricity and phase of the seasonal cycle. It also includes a routine for retrieving the Earth's orbital parameters over the past from the Laskar database.